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“My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

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Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#121

Post by mycall »

kragen wrote: post #6

During the Cold War, the primary thing that distinguished the US side from the USSR side was that, while speech by USSR people and people sympathetic to the USSR (like, say, CPUSA) was published in the US, publishing speech sympathetic to the US in the USSR would get you arrested. It seems like the US has become what the USSR was: companies who publish speech from people in Iran or Crimea are now violating the law by…

Decentralized systems have their own set of problems. You are trading one set for the other.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#122

Post by CalChris »

leereeves wrote: post #111
CalChris wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it is open source or not, GitHub is an American corporation (owned by Microsoft) and what it does is commercial activity. This isn't a free speech issue. It's not even a corporate free speech issue. This is commercial activity. Whether this is good policy or not, is another matter but it isn't a free speech matter.

How did the free software movement allow a private commercial business to obtain so much power over it?

Freely. Or cheaply. Or maybe just conveniently. Linus is worth an estimated $150M and he has a lot of power over it. It’s a conundrum.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#123

Post by colechristensen »

rdl wrote: post #114

A (very bad) US bank of mine froze my account in a way which was exceptionally difficult to fix because I tried to use the mobile app to check my balance while physically in Ukraine (not anywhere near Crimea; they chose to fucking sanction the entire country because Ukraine got invaded, which was the opposite of the intent of the law).

They would be doing that to prevent money laundering, trying to stop people going to sanctioned places and transferring money around for the locals at hefty profit. (in other words, not the opposite of the intent of the law)

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#124

Post by riku_iki »

coliveira wrote: post #106
hihi123 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you referring to Crimea as a victim? Their desire to leave the Ukraine has been well-documented since the beginning. See this amusing article from 1994 in the NYT for an example [1]: > A separatist candidate who wants Crimea to leave Ukraine and integrate with Russia won more than 70 percent of the vote today in run-off presidential elections, preliminary results showed. His victory sets the stage for a direc…

If, as you say, people want to be part of Russia, what is the difference? Do they need to be punished for wanting to be part of another country?

Russia would severely punish people who wants to be part of other country (not Russia). It is in both countries (Ukraine and Russia) constitution, that it is against the law to separate territory without country-wide voting.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#125

Post by lacampbell »

my_first_acct wrote: post #57
option wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually been to Crimea? Because I had and still have lots of relatives there (I am originally from Ukraine). I have zero doubt that overwhelming majority of people there (easily over 70%) want to be with Russia instead of Ukraine

I think your numbers are probably correct. I don't happen to know another number: how many people in Chechnya would rather be independent than part of Russia. But it doesn't matter; the Russian government is very selective about how it applies the "right to self-determination". The Russian government is likewise selective in its interpretation of the Budapest agreement (1994) [1], in which Russia guaranteed Ukraine's…

But it doesn't matter; the Russian government is very selective about how it applies the "right to self-determination".

That's the crux of the issue I think. To be consistent you would surely have to support both Chechnya and Crimea having the right to self-determination - or neither having the right to self-determination.

EDIT: So let me ask you - do you support both, or neither?

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#126

Post by pvg »

kragen wrote: post #115
pvg wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the US has become what the USSR was Not it doesn't, unless you want it to seem that way. but then, for the first couple of decades, neither did the USSR. The USSR very much had these within the first years, not decades. One of the most famous germinal camps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solovki_prison_camp Learn from history. We should, but it's useful to get the history right first.

Solovki in 1929 — or even 1939, after Stalin's first big purges — was a few thousand people. That does not amount to a "massive prison camp system full of political dissidents." You can easily find that many in the US today who are in jail for "resisting arrest" and "disorderly conduct" and such crimes against police-officer pride, and of course there are well-known controversial US concentration camps for political…

As I said, Solovki was a 'germinal'- not only - camp. Your description is at odds with fairly mainstream views, just scroll through

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

And more importantly, it was a system that was both theoretically and practically founded on political violence. It didn't take it a couple of decades to get there and its the expressions of violence weren't limited to prison camps. Politically motivated forced collectivization, for instance, ran concurrently and ended up being exterminatory.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#127

Post by fkdo »

jMyles wrote: post #56
elliekelly wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with free speech - the sanctioned account was able to open an issue on GitHub complaining of the way their account had been handled. The account is the victim of a trade embargo, not a gag order.

Their Github Pages page was censored. They are unable to participate in the maintenance of an open source repository. This was done, according to Github, as a requirement to comply with the laws of its state. If that's not a free speech issue, there are no free speech issues.

Does the first amendment apply to none us citizens/residents?

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#128

Post by mempko »

leereeves wrote: post #111
CalChris wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it is open source or not, GitHub is an American corporation (owned by Microsoft) and what it does is commercial activity. This isn't a free speech issue. It's not even a corporate free speech issue. This is commercial activity. Whether this is good policy or not, is another matter but it isn't a free speech matter.

How did the free software movement allow a private commercial business to obtain so much power over it?

You can thank O'Reilly and friends who undermined it by creating the Open Source movement.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#129

Post by geofft »

ConcernedCoder wrote: post #110
narrowingorbits wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With taxes, you do.

Yeah, instead you can show your solidarity against it by going to federal prison for tax evasion...

They couldn't fit all of us into prisons, if we all refused to pay taxes.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#130

Post by dvt »

Hidios wrote: post #85
dvt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone always brings up 655. Say what you will, the US government at least paid out to the victims (although never officially apologized). While Russia denies all involvement to this day and lawsuits are still ongoing.

Saying Russia did it too and they were much worse about it is not a valid defense of anything.

It wasn’t a defense. Two terrible things happened (let’s assume both accidental). The US admitted Iran-655 was an “accident that resulted in a loss of life” and paid out ~$200k per victim. Russia pretends like MH-17 never happened. Who do you think has more of a moral high ground?
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